Sidonia no Kishi episode 4: Savior

It seems to be a recurring theme in the show for guys to make really dumb decisions for the sake of saving a girl. At least this time around it makes much more sense to have Tanikaze make the move than Akai. Tanikaze is an untrained pilot with no disciplined and who never tried to join the military in the first place, so it is to be expected that he would not be the most robust on the rules and chain of command. He lived like a rat for most of his life after all, it is to be expected that he is not too big in following command. It really bugged me though to have Akai sacrifice himself in vain to save his girlfriend, I had greater hope for Sidonia’s military training.

But as they say, the past is in the past, so let us talk about the present. There is one thing that I absolutely loved about the episode and one thing I found really redundant and unnecessary and we’ll start with the unnecessary. The episode had a good 2 minutes recap showing us the dear memory of the 4 pro-gardes pilot who died fighting the Gauna. Problem is, that recap features just about every scenes those pilot where in and they were all from episode 3. I understand that people can have some short term memories issue sometimes, but episode 3 was just a week ago. I don’t need such a long recap of “fond” memories from what happened just last episode, I am not THAT dumb. It was especially bad since we never had a chance to get attached to those characters in the first place, so having those deep memories really didn’t bring much to the table since there was no emotional attachment there. I feel they should have just removed that flashback or made it much more simple than it was.

Now with the good stuff. It may be because I watch crappy shows, but I feel it has been forever since I saw a sci-fi that actually had any actual science in it instead of just futuristic fantasies. It was so refreshing to see a spaceship use its thrusters only for sudden change of orientation and acceleration and not only to move forward. Once you get to a certain speed in space you don’t actually have to keep the engine going, you will keep going at that speed. I’m so sick of crazy space battle where there is fire in space and where everything is in constant propulsion. It was also so great see the effect of that sudden propulsion on a spaceship that had artificial gravity, it was just absolutely great to see the damage caused only to escape the grasp of an invader. Some people might think that what the commander decided was insane, but on the contrary, she didn’t “kill” those people who were crush during the gravity emergency…she saved everyone on the ship from dying of a Gauna eating them alive.

Next episode we will see an anime remake of gravity, It is not the kind of thing I find most fun to watch, but I guess some romance development is needed to please everyone and so look out for some fun drifting in space in episode 5.